The War Was Won Before Hiroshima—And the Generals Who Dropped the Bomb Knew It

Seventy years after the bombing, will Americans face the brutal truth?

August 6, 2015

Visitors to the National Air and Space Museum—America’s shrine to the technological leading edge of the military industrial complex—hear a familiar narrative from the tour guides in front of the Enola Gay, the plane that dropped an atomic weapon on the civilians of Hiroshima 70 years ago today. The bomb was dropped, they say, to save the lives of thousands of Americans who would otherwise have been killed in an invasion of the Home Islands. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were largely destroyed and the lives of between 135,000 and 300,000 mostly Japanese women, children, and old people were sacrificed—most young men were away at war—as the result of a terrible but morally just calculus aimed at bringing an intractable war to a close.

This story may assuage the conscience of the air museum visitor, but it is largely myth, fashioned to buttress our memories of the “good” war. By and large, the top generals and admirals who managed World War II knew better. Consider the small and little-noticed plaque hanging in the National Museum of the US Navy that accompanies the replica of “Little Boy,” the weapon used against the people of Hiroshima: In its one paragraph, it makes clear that Truman’s “political advisors” overruled the military in determining the way in which the end of the war in Japan would be approached. Furthermore, contrary to the popular myths around the atomic bomb’s nearly magical power to end the war, the Navy Museum’s explication of the history clearly indicates that “the vast destruction wreaked by the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the loss of 135,000 people made little impact on the Japanese military.”

Indeed, it would have been surprising if they had: Despite the terrible concentrated power of atomic weapons, the firebombing of Tokyo earlier in 1945 and the destruction of numerous Japanese cities by conventional bombing had killed far more people. The Navy Museum acknowledges what many historians have long known: It was only with the entry of the Soviet Union’s Red Army into the war two days after the bombing of Hiroshima that the Japanese moved to finally surrender. Japan was used to losing cities to American bombing; what their military leaders feared more was the destruction of the country’s military by an all-out Red Army assault.

“The use of this barbarous weapon…was of no material assistance in our war against Japan.” —Adm. William Leahy, Truman's Chief of Staff

The top American military leaders who fought World War II, much to the surprise of many who are not aware of the record, were quite clear that the atomic bomb was unnecessary, that Japan was on the verge of surrender, and—for many—that the destruction of large numbers of civilians was immoral. Most were also conservatives, not liberals. Adm. William Leahy, President Truman’s Chief of Staff, wrote in his 1950 memoir I Was There that “the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender.… in being the first to use it, we…adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children.”

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The commanding general of the US Army Air Forces, Henry “Hap” Arnold, gave a strong indication of his views in a public statement only eleven days after Hiroshima was attacked. Asked on August 17 by a New York Times reporter whether the atomic bomb caused Japan to surrender, Arnold said that “the Japanese position was hopeless even before the first atomic bomb fell, because the Japanese had lost control of their own air.”

“It was a mistake.... [the scientists] had this toy and they wanted to try it out, so they dropped it.” —Adm. William “Bull” Halsey

Fleet Adm. Chester Nimitz, Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet, stated in a public address at the Washington Monument two months after the bombings that “the atomic bomb played no decisive part, from a purely military standpoint, in the defeat of Japan…” Adm. William “Bull” Halsey Jr., Commander of the US Third Fleet, stated publicly in 1946 that “the first atomic bomb was an unnecessary experiment…. It was a mistake to ever drop it…. [the scientists] had this toy and they wanted to try it out, so they dropped it…”

Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, for his part, stated in his memoirs that when notified by Secretary of War Henry Stimson of the decision to use atomic weapons, he “voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives…” He later publicly declared “…it wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing.” Even the famous “hawk” Maj. Gen. Curtis LeMay, head of the Twenty-First Bomber Command, went public the month after the bombing, telling the press that “the atomic bomb had nothing to do with the end of the war at all.”

The record is quite clear: From the perspective of an overwhelming number of key contemporary leaders in the US military, the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was not a matter of military necessity. American intelligence had broken the Japanese codes, knew the Japanese government was trying to negotiate surrender through Moscow, and had long advised that the expected early August Russian declaration of war, along with assurances that Japan’s Emperor would be allowed to stay as a powerless figurehead, would bring surrender long before the first step in a November US invasion, three months later, could begin.

Historians still do not have a definitive answer to why the bomb was used. Given that US intelligence advised the war would likely end if Japan were given assurances regarding the Emperor—and given that the US military knew it would have to keep the Emperor to help control occupied Japan in any event—something else clearly seems to have been important. We do know that some of President Truman’s closest advisers viewed the bomb as a diplomatic and not simply a military weapon. Secretary of State James Byrnes, for instance, believed that the use of atomic weapons would help the United States more strongly dominate the postwar era. According to Manhattan Project scientist Leo Szilard, who met with him on May 28, 1945, “[Byrnes] was concerned about Russia’s postwar behavior…[and thought] that Russia might be more manageable if impressed by American military might, and that a demonstration of the bomb might impress Russia.”

History is rarely simple, and confronting it head-on, with critical honesty, is often quite painful. Myths, no matter how oversimplified or blatantly false, are too often far more likely to be embraced than inconvenient and unsettling truths. Even now, for instance, we see how difficult it is for the average US citizen to come to terms with the brutal record of slavery and white supremacy that underlies so much of our national story. Remaking our popular understanding of the “good” war’s climactic act is likely to be just as hard. But if the Confederate battle flag can come down in South Carolina, we can perhaps one day begin to ask ourselves more challenging questions about the nature of America’s global power, and what is true and what is false about why we really dropped the atomic bomb on Japan.

Gar Alperovitz Gar Alperovitz, formerly Lionel R. Bauman Professor of Political Economy at the University of Maryland, is the author of two major studies of the Hiroshima decision: Atomic Diplomacy: Hiroshima and Potsdam and The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb.

I am not buying for one minute that dropping the atomic bomb was necessary to save American lives. How is attacking non-combatants justification for saving the lives of combatants? That logic doesn't make sense. At least not to me. That act was unconscionable!

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Gloria Worthingtonsays:

August 7, 2016 at 4:22 pm

The bombs were dropped in order to end the war in the Pacific before the Soviets could enter and claim the lands promised to them at the Yalta Conference. The extraordinary display of military might was also meant to browbeat the USSR into compliance with the US's dictates.

The target was always the Soviet Union, which is why the US and UK refused to open up a second front in Western Europe to assist the USSR until 1944, and only did so to prevent the Soviets from liberating all of Europe.

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John Candidosays:

August 8, 2015 at 6:00 am

War is a terribly fraught business. War always runs the risk of clouding our judgement and engenders emotions that can run sky-high at times. War is a crucible where nationalism speeds forever onwards to the fore of our minds squeezing out and eclipsing our values, locking out a swathe of important issues. Apart from truth being its first casualty, war and nationalism colours a proper consideration of the laws of war and the hope of their eventual enforcement.

War can loosen and minimise our commitment to legal principles such as the rule of law itself, how war is properly prosecuted, not employing war indiscriminately and disproportionately, the protection of non-combatants, to not use prohibited weapons such as landmines, biological or chemical agents, to eschew any form of torture, to not stymie or attack any hospitals or persons employed in attending the sick and injured, and to treat any prisoners of war humanely, amongst many other considerations. Moral conduct, human rights, civility and the rule of law, are what democratic societies live and die for. During war, all of these things can be considered ‘the pejorative pastime of intellectuals and oddballs who probably have too much time on their hands’.

The facts of the matter are that the rule of international law cannot be expunged, demeaned, pilloried or considered optional by any side of a conflict, except through dirty politics, self-interest and expediency. In asking that the United States apologise for dropping the atomic bomb on the civilian population of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, I am not isolating and punishing America in exclusion of the massive litany of war crimes perpetrated by Nazi Germany, the Empire of Japan, or to a lesser, more massaged and hidden extent by Italy, of its war crimes by Mussolini’s Italian Social Republic, both before and during World War II in Libya, Ethiopia, Greece, the former Yugoslavia, and Albania.

I was born in Australia after World War II and both my parents were from Italy. Always believing otherwise, I am ashamed of Italy’s history of war crimes that have been hidden from everyone through political power plays and diplomatic interference. For these and other reasons, it underscores the importance of an institution such as the United Nations and its independent International Criminal Court (ICC). The greater the power of any state has a direct bearing on a greater risk of its recourse to acts above the law or to exceptionalism. As much as I love and respect America as the leader of the West, its Achilles heel is and always has been its exceptionalism.
http://www.theguardian.com/education/2001/jun/25/artsandhumanities.highereducation

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William J Forrestsays:

August 7, 2015 at 2:07 am

I'm sickened by the crass murder of so many Japanese civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In fact, the motives were naked terrorism. Terrorism on a scale unheard of before or after. We should apologize to the Japanese people and prosecute those responsible for this ultimate War Crime.

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Joseph E Glackinsays:

August 7, 2015 at 1:19 am

My father was a Major in the Signal Corps HQ planning the Nov/Dec 1945 invasion of the mainland. After the suicides in Saipan, it was expected there would be total resistance. The US has already firebombed every major Japanese city. Gen LeMay was said to say, If we don't win this war, we will all be tried as war criminals."
At the time, 100K dead American troops and 1M wounded made the bomb look good. When the Hiroshima drop did not get an immediate surrender, the second strike was used.
Japan killed 300K Chinese in Nanking in six weeks in 1937 AFTER the city had surrendered. Britain and the US killed 130K in Dresden in firestorms, when the end of the war was inevitable.
The A-bombs killed fewer people than either of these. The US thought, with reason, that Japan would fight to the death. I remember soldiers surrendering in the 1970's who refused to believe their Emperor would surrender.
Hindsight is 20/20. At the scene, the idea of a million Allied casualties made a difference.
And, in the aftermath, no one wanted to claim the decision except Truman. But every one of them knew it saved American lives. That was what mattered.

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Georgia Johnsonsays:

May 31, 2016 at 8:19 am

I would remind you that your father was only a major. While his job and his commitment to it were undoubtedly important, it would seem unlikely that he had the same level of knowledge of the state of the Japanese war machine in 1945 that senior American generals had. I suspect that most soldiers, including most officers, only knew what their military and civilian commanders wanted them to know.

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Paul Peloquinsays:

February 12, 2016 at 11:56 pm

Read the article. The Japanese code had been broken. The military knew J was about to surrender and did not believe bombing more cities was necessary.

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Steve Harrissays:

August 6, 2015 at 8:28 pm

the scientists had this toy and wanted to try it out - fortunately there are no such westernized secularists in Iran who would cooperate. Also: the need for a quick resolution was political; Americans were more interested in baseball and a return to normalcy

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Jack Campbellsays:

August 6, 2015 at 11:48 am

Sure we could have invaded the Island of Japan and ended the war at the cost of another 100,000 American lives. All the bleeding hearts are pouring forth with their version of what could have been. The reality is the Japanese were arming the populace with ceramic grenades and any other weapons they could come up with to defend the island to the last man, woman or child.
It seems most want to forget the brutal murderous reign of these war loving people who would slaughter anyone who stood in the way of their domination.
Truman was right then and he remains right today and forever.

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Christopher Pedersensays:

May 27, 2016 at 4:30 pm

Ah yes, those "brutal war-loving people" got what was coming to them didn't they? As Gen. Westmoreland later said (in the context of Vietnam), "The Oriental doesn’t put the same high price on life as does the Westerner. Life is cheap in the Orient"

Ahh, but we Americans, we would never, _never_ "﻿ slaughter anyone who stood in the way" of _our_ "domination". Not counting the Vietnamese, of course. Or the Native Americans. Or Africans. Or Middle Eastern peoples. Never.